Murli Buluswar, AIG

former Chief Science Officer

Biography

Murli Buluswar is a trailblazing and innovative leader adept at helping mature organizations adapt and thrive in a world of data and digital disruption.

He brings a unique capability to structure challenges and opportunities through multi-disciplinary perspectives, and has attracted talent inspired by a collective vision to create scale change powered by curiosity, creativity, and a passion for fact based decision making.

Murli has the ability to develop a vision, attract inspired intrapreneurial talent, nurture collaboration to achieve simplification and consistency of decision making powered by evidence driven insights. This bridges a C-Suite gap in envisioning and monetizing the promise of a world in which data is the ‘new oil.’ He has played a pivotal role in reshaping the culture of AIG’s 97year old organization in just five years – by catalyzing it to evolve from a ‘knowing culture’ to a ‘learning culture,’ from an organization reliant on human judgment to a firm that benefits from its institutional risk insights manifested through data models. Murli achieved this by assembling a team with complementary set of capabilities in: problem structuring, data engineering, data science, and application development. This cultural change is now the foundation of AIG’s aspiration to build a sustainable advantage.

As the first C-Suite Chief Science Officer for a Fortune 100 organization, Murli has led the reimagination of sales, underwriting, and claims decisions at AIG. Complemented by advanced algorithms, AIG personnel are now making more sophisticated and faster. Under Murli’s leadership, Science has been successful in achieving efficiency and simplicity by: eliminating workflows, improving accuracy by augmenting human intelligence with machine insights, and by focusing on fewer activities that re-sculpted focus. Having achieved success in influencing change, Science exported its talent into other operating areas to accelerate the cultural adoption.

Murli’s prior experiences include insurance roles requiring a unique blend of analytical thinking, and strategic vision, people leadership, and influencing capabilities. He began his career in the mid-1990s as a Statistician at Capital One, and his last academic degree was an MBA from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Murli relocated his family from Los Angeles to the NYC area in early 2012 to join AIG. When in LA, Murli was on the Board of The Harmony Project, a not-for-profit whose mission is to help underprivileged children in LA gain purpose through free music instruction. He is now on the NYC Tri-state Board of Pratham, whose mission is to help educate underprivileged children in India. Murli speaks, writes, and is cited on how to make the promise of analytical decision making a reality in large mature organizations.

Murli Buluswar Content

Murli Buluswar, former Chief Science Officer at AIG, speaks with CXOTalk co-hosts Michael Li, CEO of The Data Incubator, and Michael Krigsman about data science and innovation in the insurance industry. How can insurance and financial services companies adapt and thrive in a world of data and digital disruption?